Use cases by function9 use cases
Operations automation for the coordination work that eats the day
Operations work is mostly moving information between people and systems. An order in a PDF has to become a sales order. A supplier's reply changes a delivery date that three other people depend on. A tenant's photo of a leak has to become a work order and a plumber's visit. A grid operator's form needs the same customer data typed for the fifth time this week. None of it needs judgment most of the time, and all of it is too irregular for classic rule-based automation.
That combination, repetitive but irregular, is exactly where language models help, provided the systems of record stay in charge. It is also where projects fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the model: Anthropic's 2026 survey of companies building agents found integration with existing systems to be the top barrier, cited by 46%. The ERP's API, the portal that has none, and the exceptions are the real work.
The builds here include customer orders entered into the ERP from email and WhatsApp, a shared inbox that sorts and files itself, suppliers chased for delivery dates, maintenance requests with a real emergency path and grid-connection paperwork filed by an agent.
Operations and logistics systems I can build
An agent for the shared inbox: every email sorted, answered or filed into the right system
Reads every email in your shared mailboxes, sends orders and invoices into the right system, drafts replies for approval, and flags fake bank-detail changes.
Microsoft 365 shared mailboxes / Gmail and Google Workspace / The ERP (Business Central in this example) / Teams or Slack / The AP flow and accounting system
An agent that chases suppliers for delivery dates and updates the ERP when they change
Emails suppliers about open POs in their language, reads confirmations and date changes, writes agreed dates to the ERP and flags the late parts that will hurt.
Outlook and Microsoft 365 / SAP Business One / NetSuite / Shopify / Microsoft Teams or Slack
Customer orders from email, PDF and WhatsApp, entered into the ERP without retyping
Turns emailed PDFs, Excel forms and WhatsApp photos into sales orders in SAP Business One or NetSuite, and sends only the doubtful lines to a rep.
Outlook and Microsoft 365 / WhatsApp Business Platform / SAP Business One / NetSuite / Excel order forms
Change orders and delays caught in site logs and emails before the notice deadline passes
Reads site logs, emails and drawing revisions for unpriced changes and hindrances, starts the contract's clock, and hands the PM a notice draft with the evidence.
Procore / Outlook and Microsoft 365 / SharePoint / Fieldwire or Raken / Drawing revisions as PDF
Grid connection and subsidy paperwork for solar and heat pump installers, prepared by an agent
Fills each grid operator's form from the job file, chases what the operator still wants, and prepares the MaStR entry, with a person checking before anything is sent.
Grid operator portals and forms / Marktstammdatenregister (MaStR) / Meine KfW / OpenSolar or the installer's CRM / Outlook
Guest registration, police reporting and tourist tax handled before check-in, in Spain and Italy
Guests share their ID data through a pre-arrival link, the build validates it and reports it to the police systems on time, and the desk only sees the exceptions.
PMS (Mews, Apaleo, Cloudbeds, Guesty) / WhatsApp Business Platform / Gmail and Google Workspace / SES.HOSPEDAJES / Alloggiati Web
Maintenance requests triaged, dispatched and chased, with a real emergency path
Takes tenant repair requests on any channel, wakes the on-call person only for real emergencies, and dispatches and chases contractors for everything else.
WhatsApp Business Platform / Property management system / Outlook / Contractor scheduling / Twilio voice and SMS
Supplier invoices turned into live recipe costs for a multi-site restaurant group
Every supplier invoice becomes current ingredient prices, so recipe costs stay live, price creep gets caught, and substitutions reach the chef before service.
WhatsApp Business Platform / Invoice inbox and e-invoices / DATEV / Xero / POS (Lightspeed, orderbird, Toast)
Cancelled clinic appointments refilled from the waitlist before the slot goes empty
When a patient cancels, the agent offers the slot to waitlisted patients who fit, books the first confirmed reply and tells everyone else the slot is gone.
Practice management system (Cliniko, Jane, Doctolib or a German practice system) / WhatsApp Business Platform / Twilio SMS / Google Calendar / Waitlist database
How these builds stay safe inside real operations
The ERP stays the source of truth
Stock, prices, customers and orders are read from the system of record at the moment they are needed, and results are written back through its API, not kept in a parallel spreadsheet.
Every write is idempotent
An order, a work order or a status update is created once, however many times a message is retried or forwarded. That single rule prevents most of the incidents that make teams distrust automation.
Uncertainty is handled line by line
A purchase order with twenty lines and one unclear part number should not stop the other nineteen. Low-confidence lines go to a person; the rest flow through.
No API is not a dead end
Portals and old desktop systems can be operated by a supervised browser or computer-use agent, with a person approving the final submission and every step recorded.
Exceptions are counted
The volume and type of exceptions is tracked weekly. It shows where the process itself is broken, which is often more valuable than the automation.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI enter orders into SAP Business One or NetSuite?
Yes. SAP Business One exposes the Service Layer, NetSuite has SuiteTalk and RESTlets, and both can create sales orders through their APIs. The work is in mapping customer part numbers to your items, checking prices and stock, and deciding what happens to lines the model is unsure about, which go to a person.
How do I automate order processing from email?
Capture every order channel into one queue, extract the lines with a model under a strict schema, match them against your items and contract prices in code, create the order through the ERP's API, and send the confirmation. Start in draft mode, where a person approves each order, and switch to automatic for customers whose orders consistently match.
What if the system we use has no API?
Then the options are a database connection if one is permitted, a file export and import, or a browser or computer-use agent that operates the screens the way a person would. The last option is slower and needs a person to approve submissions, but it is now reliable enough for repetitive portal work.
Will this replace our operations team?
It replaces the typing and the chasing, not the team. The people who knew which supplier always ships late and which customer's orders need checking become the ones who handle exceptions and improve the rules. In most operations teams that work was being squeezed out by data entry anyway.